Famous Goaded Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Goaded poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous goaded poems. These examples illustrate what a famous goaded poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Contemplation

...will, 
And in a misty veil enfolds the town. 

While the vile mortals of the multitude, 
By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on, 
Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood-- 
Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone 

Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years, 
In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim; 
And from the water, smiling through her tears, 

Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim; 
And in the east, her long shroud trailing light, 
List, O my grief, the gentl...Read more of this...
by Baudelaire, Charles


Grey Gull

...igh where my chickens picked their grain.
An outcast gull, so grey and old,
Withered of leg I watched it hop,
By hunger goaded and by cold,
To where each fowl full-filled its crop.

They hospitably welcomed it,
And at the food rack gave it place;
It ate and ate, it preened a bit,
By way way of gratitude and grace.
It parleyed with my barnyard cock,
Then resolutely winged away;
But I am fey in feather talk,
And this is what I heard it say:

"I know that you and all your tribe
...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

Ichabod

...ve lighted up and led his age,
Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven!

Let not the land once proud of him
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, naught
Save power remains;
A fallen angel's pride of thought,
Still ...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

Ichabod!

...nd led his age,
     Falls back in night.

Scorn! would the angels laugh, to mark
     A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
     From hope and heaven!

Let not the land, once proud of him,
     Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim,
     Dishonored brow.

But let its humbled sons, instead,
     From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
     In sadness make.

Of all we loved and honored, nought
     Save power rema...Read more of this...
by Whittier, John Greenleaf

In The Kalahari Desert

...t day
and still the Helmores didn't come.

The outspanned oxen moved away
at night in search of water,

were caught and goaded on
to Matabele water-hole--

nothing but a dark stain on the sand.
Makololo drank vinegar and died.

Back they turned for Fever Ponds
and found the Helmores on the way. . .

Until they got within a hundred yards,
the vultures bobbed and trampolined

around the bodies, then swirled
a mile above their heads

like scalded tea leaves.
The Prices buried ev...Read more of this...
by Raine, Craig


Little Ballads Of Timely Warning; III: On Laziness And Its Resultant Ills

...ge Adolphus Knight)
So soft of heart he wept with pity
To see our language and its plight.

He mourned to see it sorely goaded
With silent letters left and right;
These from his own name he unloaded
And wrote it Georg Adolfus Nit.

Six other men in that same city
Who longed to see a Spelling Heaven
Formed of themselves a strong committee
And asked Georg Nit to make it seven.

He joined the other six with pleasure,
Proud such important men to know,
Agreeing that their first gr...Read more of this...
by Butler, Ellis Parker

Mementos

..., worn with sighing, 
Will know the rest of infancy. 

If still the paths of lore she follow, 
'Twill be with tired and goaded will; 
She'll only toil, the aching hollow, 
The joyless blank of life to fill. 

And oh ! full oft, quite spent and weary, 
Her hand will pause, her head decline; 
That labour seems so hard and dreary, 
On which no ray of hope may shine. 

Thus the pale blight of time and sorrow 
Will shade with grey her soft, dark hair 
Then comes the day that knows...Read more of this...
by Bronte, Charlotte

New York at Night

...heir masonry
Ugly and foul, and chimneys lie
And snort, outlined against the gray
Of lowhung cloud. I hear the sigh
The goaded city gives, not day
Nor night can ease her heart, her anguished labours stay.
Below, straight streets, monotonous,
From north and south, from east and west,
Stretch glittering; and luminous
Above, one tower tops the rest
And holds aloft man's constant quest:
Time! Joyless emblem of the greed
Of millions, robber of the best
Which earth can give, the vu...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

Ode to Despair

...rd'rer's crimson hand. 
Swift o'er the earth the Monster flew, 
And round th' ensanguin'd Poisons threw, 
By CONSCIENCE goaded­driven by FEAR, 
Till the meek Cherub HOPE subdued his fell career. 

Thy Reign is past, when erst the brave 
Imbib'd contagion o'er the midnight lamp, 
Close pent in loathsome cells, where poisons damp 
Hung round the confines of a Living Grave; * 
Where no glimm'ring ray illum'd 
The flinty walls, where pond'rous chains 
Bound the wan Victim to the ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

Old King Cole

...scamps that ever cheered the devil. 

The world went on, their fame went on,
And they went on—from bad to worse; 
Till, goaded hot with nothing done, 
And each accoutred with a curse, 
The friends of Old King Cole, by twos, 
And fours, and sevens, and elevens,
Pronounced unalterable views 
Of doings that were not of heaven’s. 

And having learned again whereby 
Their baleful zeal had come about, 
King Cole met many a wrathful eye
So kindly that its wrath went out— 
Or partly ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue

...st to Lionel,
Whose hope was like the life of youth
Within him, and when dead became
A spirit of unresting flame,
Which goaded him in his distress
Over the world's vast wilderness.
Three years he left his native land,
And on the fourth, when he returned, 
None knew him; he was stricken deep
With some disease of mind, and turned
Into aught unlike Lionel.
On him--on whom, did he pause in sleep,
Serenest smiles were wont to keep,
And, did he wake, a wingèd band
Of bright Persuas...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

Sonnet I: Favourd by Heavn

...Y! with godlike pow'rs
To calm the miseries of man wert giv'n;
When passion rends, and hopeless love devours,
By mem'ry goaded, and by frenzy driv'n,
'Tis thine to guide him 'midst Elysian bow'rs,
And shew his fainting soul,--a glimpse of Heav'n....Read more of this...
by Robinson, Mary Darby

The Bombardment

...es, and phials lie shattered. All 
his trials
oozing across the floor. The life that was his choosing, 
lonely, urgent,
goaded by a hope, all gone. A weary man in a ruined laboratory,
that is his story. Boom! Gloom and ignorance, 
and the jig of drunken brutes.
Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of 
slime.
Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window, 
he can see
the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead 
of the roof,
and the ...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Garden by the Bridge

...leeper
     To burn the bodies of their cholera dead.

   But yet, their lust, their hunger, cannot shame them
     Goaded by fierce desire, that flays and stings;
   Poor beasts, and poorer men.  Nay, who shall blame them?
     Blame the Inherent Cruelty of Things.

   The world is horrible and I am lonely,
     Let me rest here where yellow roses bloom
   And find forgetfulness, remembering only
     Your face beside me in the scented gloom.

   Nay, do not shr...Read more of this...
by Nicolson, Adela Florence Cory

The Great Adventure of Max Breuck

...tters, time could ill be spared.
In jesting mood his comrades heard his tale,
And scoffed at it. He felt his anger more
Goaded and bursting; -- "Cowards! Is no one 
loth
To mock at duty --" Here they called for ale,
And forced a pipe upon him. With an oath
He shivered it to fragments on the earthen floor.

52
Sobered a little by his violence,
And by the host who begged them to be still,
Nor injure his good name, "Max, no offence,"
They blurted, "you may leave now if you will....Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Last Quarter of the Moon

...How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.
The night is sliding towards the dawn,
And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of clouds flares out of the east.
Like dogs unleashed
After a beast,
They s...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Matrix

...Goaded and harassed in the factory
That tears our life up into bits of days
Ticked off upon a clock which never stays,
Shredding our portion of Eternity,
We break away at last, and steal the key
Which hides a world empty of hours; ways
Of space unroll, and Heaven overlays
The leafy, sun-lit earth of Fantasy.
Beyond the ilex shadow glares the sun,
Scorching a...Read more of this...
by Lowell, Amy

The Trail Of Ninety-Eight

...nted and squealed and rolled,
And men went mad in the moment, huskily clamoring "Gold!"

Oh, we were brutes and devils, goaded by lust and fear!
Our eyes were strained to the summit; the weaklings dropped to the rear,
Falling in heaps by the trail-side, heart-broken, limp and wan;
But the gaps closed up in an instant, and heedless the chain went on.

Never will I forget it, there on the mountain face,
Antlike, men with their burdens, clinging in icy space;
Dogged, determined ...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

The White City

...hell, 
Did not forever feed me vital blood. 
I see the mighty city through a mist-- 
The strident trains that speed the goaded mass, 
The poles and spires and towers vapor-kissed, 
The fortressed port through which the great ships pass, 
The tides, the wharves, the dens I contemplate, 
Are sweet like wanton loves because I hate....Read more of this...
by McKay, Claude

The Wood-Cutter

...ily bubble and eddy, with sudden swirling of breast;
By night it's a writhing Titan, sullenly murmuring,
 Ever and ever goaded, and ever crying for rest.

It cries for its human tribute, but me it will never drown.
 I've learned the lore of my river; my river obeys me well.
I hew and I launch my cordwood, and raft it to Dawson town,
 Where wood means wine and women, and, incidentally, hell.

Hell and the anguish thereafter. Here as I sit alone
 I'd give the life I have left m...Read more of this...
by Service, Robert William

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